e uh good evening and welcome uh this is a meeting of the titon falls BAU Council being held May 21st 2024 this meeting is here by call to order would the clerk please read the open public meeting statement pursuant to section five of the open public meetings act adequate notice of this meeting has been provided by posting on the bulletin board at Burrow Hall and by notification to the Asbury Park Press the Newark Star Ledger in the new coaster at least 48 hours prior to the meeting and filing with the burough clerk all on December 19th 2023 thank you may I ask the clerk to call the hole Miss buckle absent Dr Dolan here Mr menelli here Mr Nessie absent Mrs clay here at this time I would like to invite everyone to join me in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God IND I with liberty and justice for all uh tonight uh there is one set of meeting minutes for approval may I have a motion to approve the April 16th 20124 regular meeting minutes motion may I have a second second may I have a roll call Dr Doan yes Mr menelli yes m clay yes at this time our B our business administrator Mr Tera fle will announce the promotional oath of office for the burrow of titon Falls Police Department good evening everybody I'm Charlie Pro administrator director of Public Safety here in Falls I'd like to uh call up Chief Mike Delia and officer wh for the special occasion chief yes welcome everybody tonight we're here uh to swear in Christopher well to the rank of Sergeant I'm so happy for Chris he just makes our Command Staff here in TI Falls so much stronger he makes our department already strong but our Command Staff is going to welcome him the Command Staff is a sergeant lieutenants captains and myself uh Chris came through a process came out number one I want to congratulate him once again I also want to congratulate his family it's a special night for him and his family I want to thank first and foremost the mayor uh V to be here tonight without his permission we would not be able to promote director of Public Safety Charles Franco the council for always supporting us and the administration uh without further Ado Chris is going to take his oath and be sworn in as the next Sergeant here in tit Falls my God they're so cute I can't take it Christopher will you Solly swear you Solly swear that I will support the constition that I will support the Constitution of the United States of the United States and the constition and the constitution of the state of New Jersey of the state of New Jersey and I will bear true faith and I will bear true faith and aliance to the same and allegiance to the same and to the governments established and to the governments established in the United States and the United States and in the state and in the state under the authority of the people and the authority of the people I Do fur swear I do furly swear that fath that I fa and and partially and and justly perform all the DU perform all the duties of Sergeant of Sergeant according to the best of my according to the best my so help me God thank you they're so cute little bit you want to say a couple words [Music] hold on I know it's so cute a door one more a small one there thank I going to give them a second and then tell them that they can be thinkk okay something I don't feel like I have to I don't know I just who knows what's to looks like they have we being Ambush I know I just let them out uh congratulations Sergeant wellan um thank you uh for your service and thank your family as well um at this point we're going to resume the meeting starting with reports Mr Naf our bar engineer thank you uh not much new since the last council meeting just an update on the library that contractor was scheduled to complete their punch list repairs today so we're anticipating that the library folks can get in there next week to start prepping uh everything on there and to keep moving forward with this project get the library open that's all I have oh thank you so much I'm Mr ter Hano our bar administrator thank you council president good evening everyone just a few quick notes we have our uh tin Falls Memorial Day service is going to be May 27th at 11:00 a.m. held at Sycamore Park everyone in the community is invited and also we're working on uh we have a draft form currently we're working on a community volunteer application for our upcoming um 75th Anniversary event that's going to be held in the summer of 2025 um councilman uh Deputy president Dr doberan will be uh a co-chair alone with Council um Nessie and I see Mr DEET is in the audience he's also agreed to be on the committee along with um we have some of our DPW Personnel EMS personnel and fire Personnel who are also going to be on a planning committee as well but we're going to extend that to the community um to bolster our volunteer ranks for our planning committee so we are in draft form once that's finalized we'll put it up on our website and we'll blast it out on our social media platforms to get additional volunteers and then we'll formalize our committee and then we're going to start running full boore um within the next few weeks with our planning committee so be on the lookout for that as well and that's your notice to the community we're definitely looking for volunteers who have experience it's going to be a large event so if you have any experience in running events of that magnitude we definitely like your help and that's all I have thank you uh Mr starky our director of law uh I have no report tonight thank you thank you uh Miss Hutchinson our clerk I have no report this evening thank you thank you uh moving on to council reports Dr Doan okay um I'm glad to hear that the library is doing well and we do have a board meeting on June 6 so by then I think they'll get into the library and uh check it out exactly what's going on uh so that's moving along very well and as far as the library goes they're also working on the music festival for August 17th that's Saturday August 17th and um we're looking forward to uh doing a good job as we do every year and as far as uh other events that are happening uh glad to hear from Mr Tera fko that we have the Memorial Day at 11:00 you said on May 27th uh we just had U ice cream with a cop this past week that was a lot of fun especially because I snuck a ice cream sandwich even though I'm not one of the children so I had to confess at this meeting so I'm glad our counselor is back just in case I'm in trouble so uh we did that uh I'll be attending um the Earl base we'll be having a ceremony on June 7th and uh the council and the mayor were invited on uh June Let's see we have uh Special Olympics I'll be attending Special Olympics New Jersey uh it's at uh TCNJ in ying and that's on June 8th uh we have August 6th National Night Out and uh as I mentioned August 17th for the music festival so a lot of activities and U we're looking forward to reporting on them when I get back thank you so much thank you Dr Doman Mr Manel hey thank you uh council president um the majority of my time as a council member has been spent uh on the landfill and uh made some significant changes the complaint system has been completely modified it's no longer necessary for you to be home when you make the complaint you don't have to make a you don't have to get a complaint number inspector will arrive at the scene within a half hour from the call major major Improvement and we got to thank the county for that in terms of the order we've been fortunate that hasn't been in order for 3 weeks but that doesn't mean it's not going to come back so we will maintain the vill the vigilance that we've had since uh December actually thank you and that's all I have tonight thank you Mr Manali um in terms of my report um Dr toin mentioned the ice cream with a cop uh that was a great event um last weekend and uh our Police Department I believe does an outstanding job with community relations and I was very proud to be a part of that day um we have I think Mr Tera ano mentioned we are in the process of our planning for Community day and those meetings have begun um as Mr Mangin mentioned um he and I have been meeting twice a month uh with both presidents and uh professionals from the county uh to get a better management of the landfill situation and um as I've mentioned in the past he's done an outstanding job uh getting things in line there um and lastly I would just like to mention um in case people are not aware uh there will be an extra K8 Board of Ed meeting on May 30th uh to discuss preschool expansion and um it's open to all uh let's see moving on to ordinances there are no ordinances for introduction and there are no ordinances for final consideration at this time at this time may I have a motion to open the public discussion motion and the second thank you all in favor this is the time time the public May comment on any topic of their choice please state your name and address for the record and please limit your comments to 3 minutes at this time I'd like to ask the clerk if any public comments were submitted to the meeting via email there were none thank you uh is there any member of the audience that would like uh to make a comment hi my name is Charlie Deeds I'm from Reeds Road and this is regards the 75th Anniversary um I I've ran the last fair or the last 10 years of fairs in this town but they ended around 1994 and that was The Sire Stakes at Willowbrook uh for the 75th it really is time to start making some plans what I would like to do is I go visit other fairs around the county and talk to their food truck vendors their uh little vendor sites but I can't represent myself as being from the burough of tinon Falls unless I am uh representing the wishes of you folks if there's some way you could just make it official or give me an inomata or something like that because I'll be starting to visit these fairs next weekend and that's the end of my comment um Mr Shaner do we have um any idea of a time frame when the committee will actually be in place in response to U Mr deetz's Question so once I obviously talk to Dr doberan and councilman Nessie uh I I'll talk to Mr de offline and we'll we'll get those things s okay perfect thank you uh any other public comments got all these young people here no comments from the young people I know we were kind of excited when we saw you that come on there's got to be a spokesman out there question or something come on up introduce yourself tell us why you're here come on up hello guys hi I'm Tyler Sacramento way and we're here from Communications high school and we have to write an article about the meeting oh boy so is there anything exciting and awesome that's been happening in tin Falls that we could write about right about the softball field have you seen that and the library is opening oh yes very exciting um and we have Community today and we're starting to plan uh for our Big Town anniversary yeah there's two new S field and a historic preservation a committee will have a a great celebration for juneth uh big celebration and the music festival in August Awesome where are the two new soft ball fields going to be uh at Sycamore Sycamore Park is that so the very first event we're having is obviously on Monday is Memorial Day services so that's an important time in American history right so that's very important and then all the other events that everyone here just listed you can go down chronologically and hit all those as well right yeah and I think it's probably very important that you know that you have a former uh School educator sitting right there as our council president right so you could probably feel one or two questions from her that includes all of you you did a great job thank you for representing each one of them one oh good jobs that's great uh hello I'm Max Estrada from Riv Red Road and as being a former teacher or educator how do you think it helps you to uh lead the town um I'm actually um a retired High School principal um from rbr okay um and um I in my opinion what I've learned over the years there um having to work with uh students and teachers and parents is how to bring different opinions together and be able to listen to other viewpoints and reach a consensus I think that um if you're able to make that happen then you you have a a good guarantee of success thank you so much oh thank you well you missed a point the initiative that you just brought with the Middle School oh well I don't know one well one of the biggest things that were the initiative she just brought forth this year is Bridging the Gap between students and government to try and show students like yourselves what local government does and what the Nexus is between the students and the government how important it is because we just changed some of our rides at our Our Community Day event because of feedback we had gotten from students um at the middle school believe it or not so we actually listened to students what kind of suggestions do they have they had different uh they wanted different rides at our community Day event um more tailor toward probably kids about your age and things like that are a little bit younger um and they said we're kind of missing things that capture them and their excitement for the Community Day so we made a few changes this year because of that what did you guys do what exactly we change we have more exciting rides for them we have a rock coming wall this year we have a different type of bounce house we have um one I don't even know what they call but it's one of these things where you actually have to duck before you over but things like that that are more in tune to what the the tween want the 12 13 years old rather than a little kid rid and things like that so so we want them to come to our end so we asked them and they said if you do those things but we also showed them different things from you know from the government aspect what we do um our for attorney was there our engineer was there our CFO was there so they got to understand what each of the um Professionals in our local form of government do and they were captivated by that too so we got a lot of questions and a lot of um exposure that way and the kids really like it all right thank you so much for your time Lu thanks anybody El sorry um I just had a question about the music festival happening August 17th right um what type of like things or like events are happening at the music festival do you have like certain bands playing there or yes um they're going to be uh several bands playing uh and that's continuous throughout the evening it's um starts at at 5:00 and goes till about 9:00 but there's all there's what oh yeah there's food there's um a lot of things the library obviously has some events planned with you know certain games and uh events but it's a very nice night for everybody on in the town all ases are welcome um it's a just a relaxing beautiful night and we've done it for several years and again it's to um help fund the things that the library needs for when we do the reopening so it's going to be a fun event for everybody and there's a lot of good bands playing too so it's almost like a fundraiser for the library that's correct okay and what bands are playing there do you know yet or is it we I don't have the list but uh this the team works on it and soon I guess we're going to have a board meeting this uh coming month and we'll see how many of those uh and it will be published it'll be published on the website is uh Mr T was that on the website so people do Facebook too I guess yeah I I don't think Bruce springing will be there but I don't think that really matters much oh that's right that's for the older folks yeah that's but um what groups do you like oh um everything but yeah I have a lot of friends who are in band so I was just is it going to be younger performers or is it going to be like professional yeah they'll be the performers are all different AG as a matter of fact um yeah they have volunteers who uh will volunteer to play and they're us usually up incoming bands who want to get some exposure so they you know they don't charge us to to come but we do have you know uh good sound system uh so we pay somebody to do that it's really a nice event and the bands are really a lot of fun too I know it's definitely something like our school would be interested in cuz we go to Communications is art school so right now we're trying to kind of get a movement for more music to be there so I think this would be a really cool event for us to talk about just to get more music integrated into our school so thank you oh thanks so much thanks for your question anyone else my name is lead better and I live on squankum road my only question tonight is as I was taking notes I know you guys briefed over um the issue with the landfill and that's actually what I was looking forward to writing um just because I missed it while I was writing could you kind of brief over again what the updates were with the like complaint system I didn't I'm sorry I didn't hear the question the updates for the complaint system she was asking about the change what has happened is uh in the past Environmental prote ction would be handling uh all of the complaints and they would determine where that complaint should go and invariably they gave it to the county the Board of Health and uh there were a couple of problems with that they would not necessarily do it that same day that they got the complaint they might wait to get three or four complaints before they sent it out uh it also required that the complaintant be home when the complaint is made that's changed now the county is taking it over so the initial call will go directly to the county and they will hear the call and they will uh send an an investigator to the site you don't have to be home to wait for the investigator and the investigator will make an assessment of the order and prepare a report and it's simplified now you don't have to get a complaint number it's just you just call and make the complaint it'll be handled completely by the county and of course tit and Falls will get involved because they will notify us of the calls they received so it's much simplified now that's CU a complaint system in terms of the order we're fortunate in the last three weeks we haven't had an order however I don't think that's a forever thing I think occasionally it's going to crop up and the waste management incorporator that manages this landfill they'll do what they have to they've made a lot of improvements and it's obvious because there haven't been any complaints thank you okay thank you very much anyone else hi my name is Alexandra marmu uh do court so about the um funds that are going towards the library um my question was why are the money from the Music Festival going towards the library and not like other things related to the town and like why people care so much about the library like if it's like a big thing well so so the fundraiser Dr D was talking about the funds they've raised from the music festival they're using at the to augment the library so the library is under renovation right now um and we're hopeful that we're going to be opening the library in the fall is that what you're asking yeah like where like if it's going to be reopen or like a new one's going to be built it's we're renovating it right now so it's going to be reopening in the fall so what they raised is going toward the library reopening and Inter operating expenses going forward so yes that money is going toward the and um it was I'm sorry it was actually um the library was actually closed uh for several years and there was also a grant uh that the town was able to obtain uh to help pay to open the library and um it's definitely a topic that's been debated uh not just amongst this Council but um with previous councils as well and administrations in terms of what is the value of a library and uh like from my perspective it isn't just about books although of course books are important uh but we also have to think about it as a potential place that um that moms and dads can gather with kids that um seniors could take like a little workshop um that students that maybe that don't have internet access um and I know that there are some I know that seems kind of hard to believe but um as a former uh principal I know that there's a lot of kids that once they leave their school they don't have internet access in their home and these were all major concerns along with the idea that uh we were one of the only towns that didn't have a public library and like there's a message with that in terms of what do you value and that's something that was important for us those extra funds do you know there's a lot of miscellaneous things that occur and they don't want to necessarily bother the town all the time and take and take but they want to uh have the cooperation we have a lot of residents who have donated money for this uh uh actual operation at the library and this extra money can be utilized for many things that want to be purchased by the library for instance um they wanted some new carpet at the in the entrance uh these are little things that you know again they don't want to be SP ing off the uh the town to you know facilitate it but with the extra funds we can buy those things you know buy extra books buy extra uh equipment so you know it works out pretty well for us to have this extra fund thank you so much thank you good question anyone else you guys are doing great this is the most interaction we've had in a long time it's keep coming hello Max just try to River Edge again um so if I correct me if I'm wrong but there was mold in the library right uh how much money and time did it take to fix that Library Mr do you want to answer that so as far as how much time I think it goes back to 2017 actually or so 2017 2018 and part of the delay was because the state had told us they were going to put out the first ever Library Grant where the state was actually going to give towns you know if they applied and met certain requirements was competitive but towns could get grant money and unfortunately the state took much longer than they planned to release that Grant and then the first round was very competitive we didn't get any funding the first round so we had to wait another year for the second round in the second round we were selected and I think we got 174 ,000 for it and the town had to match that with another $174,000 so and we're using just about all of that um the mold has all been cleaned up that was the initial phase uh the old trailer in the back was removed put in new uh HVAC system electric upgrades did some structural upgrades the floor joist things like that um so yeah they're literally wrapping up the final punch list today the contractor what was the total time of that process so from 2018 we'll say so about five probably six years how long did the construction take uh construction was shorter um well as many phases so the mold remediation took a couple weeks that was done um initially the actual main trunk of construction was probably about 5 months all right thank you so much welcome thanks all right anyone else I have one final question um could we all just get your names and roles please just for the Articles we could properly like quote all of you you want Tok you uh Tom nef burrow engineer yeah also at the end if you want you can walk around everyone's got uh name tags name plate when we do that they probably have why don't we just send them minutes send them the minutes of the meeting they won't be approved till the next if one of your friends would help you with their phone they should just come up take take a picture of everybody yeah just screenshot everybody yeah take the name texes you come up here that's fine so funny thanks all right um hearing no fur the comments may I have a motion to close the public discussion so move and a second second all in favor hi hi uh does any member of council have anything to add I just like to uh say thank you for coming tonight and I hope this was an interesting uh experience for you I know that communication school is very good my daughter actually attended it so uh um she's done very well with the experience at communication and um also if you have any questions uh you can go to our website and access our emails all of us there in case you needed any follow-up info uh at this point we're going to move on to the consent agenda are there any items any member of council would like remove to be voted on separately hearing none may have a motion to approve the consent agenda motion and a second thank you and roll call Dr Doan yes Mr menelli yes Mrs clay yes this concludes today's business may I have a motion to adjourn motion and a second second all in favor I I this meeting is nowed time 80